Two former Pussy Riot members briefly detained in Sochi, questioned over hotel theft

Two ex-members of the Pussy Riot group, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, were held by security forces on Tuesday after a hotel they were staying in filed a theft complaint to police, officials said.

“They are being questioned concerning a theft that at a hotel
they are staying at. Along with Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Mariya
Alyokhina, all the hotel’s guests are being questioned,”
local police said, as quoted by Interfax news agency.

Some three hours after the detainment, the two women were seen
leaving the police station in Sochi's district of Adler.

"The questioning in regard to the theft has been completed,
we have no claims against those questioned," police told RIA
Novosti news agency.

The activist, who first posted the news on Twitter, Semyon
Simonov, says at least five other activists were also detained.
The arrest took place in central Sochi, some 30 km north of the
main Olympic venues.

“I have no idea what’s this theft about,” Alyokhina
commented on the charges to the BBC Russian on the cellphone.

A person who answered the phone at the Malakhit Hotel where the
women were staying confirmed to Interfax a case of theft saying a
purse had gone missing. However, there was no indication of who
was responsible and the person referred all further questions to
the police.

Tolokonnikova has written in her Twitter account that she was
beaten by the investigators during the questioning and she was
planning to file a complaint. However, according to the Sochi
police she has not officially complained about the questioning
process, RIA Novosti reported.

A law enforcement source told Ridius that nobody was planning to
detain the former Pussy Riot members and that they just wanted to
question the two. Nevertheless, a ‘support group’ soon
gathered around them and disrupted the police investigations, the
source said, explaining why both of them were taken to a police
station. According to the source, the conflict was triggered
exclusively by Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina and their
"supporters."

Police officers who were working in the hotel did not know that
the two were members of the protester group, “but when they
realized this, it was too late,” the source said, adding
that the police had a real a “headache.”

Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova spent almost two years in prison but
were released on amnesty in December. They had been imprisoned
over a protest in Moscow's prominent Christ the Savior cathedral.

The ex-Pussy Riot members came to Sochi to stage protest actions
on behalf of the punk group, despite reports of having been
expelled from it. One
of the protest songs to be performed at the Olympics is called,
“Putin will teach you to love your motherland,”
Tolokonnikova said on Twitter.

The women have been in Sochi for over two days. On February 16,
they were detained for 7 hours, while on February 17, they spent
10 hours with the Federal Security Service, Tolokonnikova
tweeted.

During the latest – and third – detention, police used force, the
ex-Pussy Riot members alleged.